Openwashing

Openwashing: to spin a product or company as open, although it is not. Derived from 'greenwashing.' Michelle Thorn
Openwashing: n., having an appearance of open-source and open-licensing for marketing purposes, while continuing proprietary practices. Audrey Watters

A review of usage of the word "open" in the contexts of open content, open educational resources, open access, open data, open knowledge, open source, and open standards reveals that the community understands "open" to mean two things: (1) Free access to the content, resource, journal article, data, knowledge artifact, software, or standard, and (2) a formal grant of rights and permissions giving back to the user many of the rights and permissions copyright normally reserves exclusively for the rights holder.

When you see an individual, organization, or company claim that their software is "open," check to see if their software is licensed under an OSI approved license. If it is not, they are openwashing.

When you see an individual, organization, or company claim that their content is "open," check to see if it is licensed under a Creative Commons license, another license that grants you the 5R permissions, or placed in the public domain. If it is not, they are openwashing.

If you see openwashing happening, tweet a link to the source with the hashtag #OpenwashingNominee. Your tweet will appear below and be preserved in the Twitter record.



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